a) throw away a $300,000 piece of equipment for lack of drivers, assuming the company producing it has disappeared without all trace

or

b) spending less than $300,000 on employee time to make it work again

then to me case b sounds preferable, even in efficiency-first organisations. The military, i don't know. All i'm saying is that b wouldn't even be feasible without stuff being Libre, so diatribe or not, it actually would benefit public, private and commercial users' interests.

Anyway, probably i'm too optimistic about things.